Five Dock boardwalk plan: Residents push Canada Bay Council

Plans for a boardwalk alongside one of Sydney’s most popular bays would create a 5.5km ‘Bay Run’ style track for families to enjoy, according to campaigners.

Campaigners are calling for a 170m boardwalk to be built in a bid to create a 5.5km continuous bayside track in Five Dock.

Residents are urging the City of Canada Bay Council to build the boardwalk connecting Halliday Park and Friend Ave in Five Dock.

In doing so it would provide the ‘missing link’ to a potential 5.5km bay run on Hen and Chicken Bay.

A petition on change.org called ‘Build The Boardwalk’ was launched earlier this month.

Resident Victor Bivell, who launched the petition, said: “It’s a great issue and it’s got a lot of public support.

“This is a really excellent opportunity to open up some more of the foreshore.

“And it (foreshore access) is particularly difficult in the Inner West because there’s a lot of waterfront development.”

The section of the foreshore in question is small, but it would bring significant benefits, Mr Bivell said.

Currently, there’s a foreshore walk connecting Henry Lawson Park in Abbotsford to Halliday Park in Five Dock and – on the other side of the bay – a second walk from Friend Ave to Prince Edward Park in Cabarita.

The new boardwalk would connect the routes.

“Unfortunately, they don’t join up at the moment and to get from one to the other, you’ve got to do an 800 metre detour that includes going along a busy road,” Mr Bivell said.

“This not only takes the aesthetics out of it, but more importantly parents don’t want their kids riding along that busy stretch of road.

At low tide, those more daring are able to make the walk, but it is dependent on the tide and requires traversing down over rocks, making it far from ideal for young children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

Looking west to east, from Friend Ave to Halliday Park, at where a new boardwalk could be constructed. Picture: Supplied

“If we can build this boardwalk to connect the two halves, that would solve all those problems,” he said.

While improving accessibility, it would also produce benefits for the area that span health and even photography.

“A boardwalk would provide recreational benefits, it would open up fishing, running and photography opportunities,” Mr Bivell said.

“The benefits are going to flow much more widely than just the people who live around the bay.”

Mr Bivell floated the idea of a new boardwalk back in 2003 and his sustained campaigning resulted in Canada Bay Council including it as an option in its 2020 Foreshore Access Strategy.

However, pressure from the small number of property owners on the stretch of foreshore where the boardwalk was proposed resulted in the plan being dropped.

“The beach and foreshore is all public land, the back fence of these properties is where the private land ends,” Mr Bivell said.

“I think that was the extreme option (dropping the idea). What should have been done is that we kept it as a strategy, worked on it and tried to solve the issues.”

Mr Bivell said a boardwalk could actually improve privacy for the properties on the stretch of foreshore.

“At the moment, anyone in a boat at high tide can go right up to the back fence, at low tide people can walk right up,” he explained. “But a boardwalk further away from their properties would limit all this.”

Looking east to west, from Halliday Park to Friend Ave, at the patch of the foreshore where a boardwalk could be placed. Picture: Supplied

Those in favour of a boardwalk have not been deterred and support is gathering pace.

Matt Levinson, spokesman for the Committee for Sydney (an urban policy think tank), said: “If anything united Sydneysiders over the past year, it was Sydney’s great foreshore walks, and that’s something more people should have access to.

“While there would be individual impacts to manage, we don’t believe they should stop council from taking another look at this idea – there is the potential for a great community outcome.”

Andrew Ferguson, a Labor councillor at Canada Bay, explained that while he’ll be sure to “carefully examine all submissions in support and objections against”, foreshore accessibility is something that needs to be improved.

“I am very excited about the proposal – Council needs to do more to upgrade and extend access to and the connectivity of our precious foreshore,” he said.

“We need to ensure we get the best possible outcome for all in our community and any concerns are properly addressed if we proceed.”